Put Everything In Its Place, Including Your Business…

‘She Who Must…’ often tells me we have ‘Storage Issues’ … but, as Lowe Towers is quite substantial by most people’s standards, I’ve always maintained we have enough room … yet unauthorised furniture occasionally appears – only to be sent off to be professionally ‘roughed up’ and come back an entirely different colour…

This is, apparently, so that ‘everything’ has a place. Now, far be it from me to suggest that ‘She Who Must…’ is ever anything but entirely correct, but I think she does make a point here that is particularly valid as a reminder to almost everyone reading this…

I’m not going to start suggesting that ‘everything having a place’ means you should all start tidying up and keeping your desk clear (after all, you know what they say a clean desk is the sign of…) but instead that, where, and just as importantly when, you work on your business, needs to have its own dedicated ‘place’ among everything else that you do…

Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a room or area you can just shut the door on when you’re ‘working’, maybe you don’t … but you do need to try and create somewhere you can go without being disturbed too often, and focus on what you are doing without the kids running past every five minutes, the dog needing to be let out or the other half filling you in on their day.

It also helps if you can make set times for doing things, so maybe you do your business stuff while the other half is watching the soaps or the football, or after the kids have gone to bed … and believe me, half an hour’s dedicated time on your business is worth any 4 or 5hrs sat with your laptop on the sofa in front of the TV.

This may seem obvious but take a moment to be honest with yourself about the last time you shut the door on the outside world and dedicated at least half an hour to getting things done without getting distracted by non-business emails, what’s happening on Facebook or checking out something online that is only marginally relevant to what you are actually trying to achieve.

It is one of the great ironies of this industry that, when you start your home business, it is usually with the intention of spending more time with your family … and yet the first thing you normally end up doing is spending what little time you actually had at home locked away trying to get things going.

However, if you spend that time focused on working hard at doing the right things, it shouldn’t be too long before you start seeing the rewards on both a financial and personal level…